THE CHRISTIAN IN THE LIGHT OF GOD
[p. 577] THE CHRISTIAN IN THE LIGHT OF GOD
In considering the force of any portion of the Word it is important to bear in mind that truth forms one complete whole, and that while we learn it in parts, it is the Spirit’s work to form it as a complete whole in our souls. We may have keen enjoyment of some particular passage of Scripture, but at the same time we want to get understanding as to the way in which various parts form part of one scheme. It is therefore important to be enabled to put together the various parts.
In this epistle (Romans) there are three chapters of which the object is evidently to present God to us, namely, chapters 3, 4, 5, while the next three chapters, 6, 7, 8, present what the christian is for God. We have necessarily to learn first what God is as revealed in the gospel, in the economy of grace; and hence chapter 3 presents the righteousness of God, as witnessed in the blood of Christ; chapter 4, the power of God as set forth in the resurrection of Christ, and chapter 5 the love of God as shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Spirit given, and it is in this way that God has been pleased to reveal Himself to us; and I think that we learn things in the order of Scripture. We do not learn the love of God first. No! We are sinful, we have to learn His righteousness, made known in grace and not in judgment, and it is this which the gospel reveals. (Romans 1: 17.) It is the first thing which God impresses on the heart of the sinner. The blood is the witness that God is righteous, but it is the ground, too, on which God can in grace justify, so we read, “that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus”.
[p. 578] Then in chapter 4 we get the great truth of the power of God, and that displayed in raising Christ from the dead. It has thus operated to His glory.
Then in chapter 5 we have the love of God, of which the death of God’s Son is the proof; and which we know when the Holy Spirit is given to us.
These chapters present thus the full revelation of God to us, and it is by this alone that the heart of the believer is affected. The effulgence of God, the knowledge of His glory, for which God had shone into the heart of the apostle, is the light of the gospel, and this is the foundation which in his ministry the apostle laid in souls. (1 Corinthians 3: 10, 11.)
Now in the three succeeding chapters, 6, 7, 8, we get, as we have said, the completeness of the christian’s place before God. They give us a true idea of christianity, placing the believer morally outside the world and the course of it.
Chapter 6 is the new platform. The believer is privileged to reckon himself dead indeed unto sin and alive unto God in Christ Jesus.
In chapter 7 he is married to Christ, raised up from the dead to bring forth fruit to God. Christ is the law to the believer, the pattern or model on which he is formed.
In chapter 8 we find he is not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, and the Spirit is the power by which we are formed subjectively. We are, so to say, in the grip of God, to be formed in something completely new, in which we had no part before. What we are to live in is sonship, and we come to this in the end of the passage I read. (verses 14 - 17.) To this end Christ had to become Man and to accomplish redemption, and redemption being accomplished, we “receive sonship”, Galatians 4: 4 - 6.
Life is that by which a creature enjoys the position in which he is placed of God. God has been pleased to set us in the place of sons, and sonship is that [p. 579] I am in the light of God’s love and responsive to it. This is the meaning of the cry, “Abba, Father”.
To refer again to chapter 6. There, as I have said, you are to reckon yourself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. The principle of the world is sin, Sin is seen in that everything here ends in death. “By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin”. Most people connect sin with the idea of something gross, but this is not the thought of Scripture. The ‘man of sin’ is the lawless one. Sin is the principle in man which refuses the restraint of God. The leaders of thought in the present day claim absolute freedom of mind and to exercise this without restraint in the things of God, but perdition, which means moral ruin, is connected with this. The man of sin is ‘the son of perdition’ (2 Thessalonians 2: 3.) In chapter 6 we accept death to sin, and the new platform is “alive to God” — that means that the soul of the believer — lives in the blessed light of the revelation in which God has been pleased to make Himself known; but then this is manifestly outside of the whole course of the world. Death is here, and this proves that the ruling principle of the world is sin. It is for this reason that the christian has to accept death to sin.
Now in the next chapter the believer is placed in relation to One raised from the dead. No one can know naturally the ways of One risen from the dead, but the believer is placed under the Son of God, under the influence of His love, that he may be formed after Him. This, I judge, is the force of being married, or joined to Him, and just as you are under the influence of the love of the Son of God (Galatians 2: 20), the One raised from the dead, so you bring forth fruit to God. The love of Christ evidently had a great place with the apostle. “The love of Christ constraineth us”, we read in 2 Corinthians 5: 14. We are to live to Him who died for [p. 580] us and rose again. We have to learn His ways, the ways of One risen from the dead. If you come under the influence of His affection, you will be formed according to Him, and all that is according to Christ in us is fruit to God. This is the true line. I am not simply on a new platform, able to reckon myself alive to God, but I am placed in relation to One under the influence of whose affection fruit will be brought to God. There is no vine now on earth, but there is fruit-bearing, but not apart from Christ. I need to be under the control of His affection, so that I may be made sensible of His claim upon me, “who loved me, and gave himself for me”. It is as our souls have learned His ways that we bring forth fruit to God.
I pass on to chapter 8. Here we find a point of equal importance. We have had the platform and the husband, but these would be ineffective were it not for the power which resides in the christian. Until grace works in man he is not conscious of the flesh, of the law of sin in his members, and this is concurrent with the conviction of mind (I do not see in this, a nature) that God’s law is good. So the conclusion is, that with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin. The law of sin in the members is too strong, notwithstanding the conviction and mind as to God’s law. Now in chapter 8 we get the power in the believer by which he can be free from the law of sin and death.
In chapter 6 we have seen that sin is not dead, but that the believer is to accept death to sin, so that he may be on the platform which God has formed for him. In chapter 8, on the other hand, we get the power in the christian. God has been pleased to bring in crucifixion to condemn sin in the flesh in order that He might be able to communicate the gift of the Spirit. I see the same connection in John 3 and 4. Man’s state according to nature (not merely the principle of the state, which is sin, but the state itself), the flesh is condemned in the Son of man lifted up. Then in chapter 4 we get the well of water in the believer springing up to eternal life. The christian has to prove the power and virtue of that which God has placed within him. We get everything by the Spirit and from no other source.
This has been the wisdom of God, to bring in in Christ the condemnation of man’s state — a public expression in the cross of His mind in regard to sin in the flesh, and that in order that He might communicate the Spirit to man to emancipate him from the control of sin.
These verses (9 - 11) are brought in to teach us that we are wholly dependent upon the Spirit. It would be wrong for the believer to say he could not do the things that he would; he is “not in the flesh, but in the Spirit”, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in him. Then also Christ is in him, and that by virtue of his having the Spirit (verse 10). Then we get “the Spirit is life”. The question here is of living to God, and in this sense, the Spirit is life, because of righteousness. Then he will get final quickening as to his body, because of the Spirit indwelling him. Thus you have three things:
- A power in you greater than the flesh.
- Christ in principle in you.
- The hope of quickening of the body.
It is a great thing to see that we are apart from the flesh, and that all our relations with God are carried out in the Spirit. We can do everything down here to the glory of God, but none the less our relations with God are not in eating and drinking, they are in the Spirit. It is a great thing to be able to retire from the outward, from the duties and details of daily life, to the inward in the Spirit.
[p. 582] How is my heart made acquainted with the love of God or enabled to cry, “Abba, Father”? It is by the Spirit. My relations with God are all maintained in the Spirit.
It is most important to apprehend the wonderful place which the Spirit takes. He is the Spirit of God, because He sheds abroad the love of God and He is the Spirit of God’s Son because He cries, “Abba, Father” in the believer.
In verses 13 - 15 the point is that we are not debtors to the flesh, for the principle upon which God gave the Spirit was the condemnation of sin in the flesh. We have everything to anticipate from the Spirit. If we want liberty we have it in the Spirit. There is a power by which we can mortify the deeds of the body and thus live. If we want privilege we have it in the Spirit. The Spirit is the Spirit of sonship, for He is the Spirit of God’s Son. Here we are viewed as children, which is the recognised place and relationship in which we are set as down here in association with a rejected Christ. We are suffering with Him and we anticipate being glorified with Him. We are the objects of the Father’s love according to the prayer, “that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them”, John 17: 26. This is the compensation we get for being in association with a rejected Christ.
The power of christianity is the Spirit, but the substance of christianity is love.
God has made known His love, and it is in the Spirit that we enjoy it; and in this connection it may not be inappropriate to notice the way in which the blessing of the believer is bound up with the Persons of the Godhead as now revealed.
In view of the glory of the Father, the believer is to walk in newness of life; he is married to Christ, raised up from the dead, to bring forth fruit unto God; and he is in the Spirit as being indwelt by the Spirit of God.